Ben, Is it possible to figuratively flip back through the pages to see what I've already logged? I just clicked submit, just as I realized I might have mis-entered my AMs and PMs. I'd love to be able to see whether I actually goofed. Similarly, since the data is there, it would be interesting to see how much time I've logged for a particular project from time to time. Thanks for this most excellent resource!
Pete,
Currently we don't have that feature. We do have some sanity checks in place, though:
- You can't enter negative hours. (start 10am, end 2am -> should have been 2pm)
- You can't enter a time more than 4 hours into the future. We tried blocking all future entries, but some folks like to sign out before they're actually done, because it is more convenient if they are working away from the Percival House. Or they are offsite and have a known block of time, so they log at the start instead of the end.
- You can't enter huge blocks of time. I believe the offsite upper limit is 100 hours. This is to catch the wrong month or the wrong year.
Clearly there are still errors that will pass through these filters. We have retained James' audits from the old system, which help us find these mistakes.
We could add a feature like this, but you would still have to email me anyway to fix it. The reason we can't allow post-submission editing for all users is for FRA compliance. Basically, we need our database to be write-once. If an entry needs to be changed, there has to be a paper trail. We accomplish this by limiting who can make changes to entries after submission, and logging all this kind of activity in the admin backend.
For general volunteer work, it's true that FRA compliance is irrelevant, but it's too complicated and fraught to try to build the firewall down the middle of the database, protecting train crew data but leaving general volunteer data open. With our current database structure there would be too many potential loopholes. It's much simpler to just protect the entire database.
There are a few related features, like viewing personal hours YTD or all-time, that might also be convenient to have. We'd have to discuss whether there are any issues with exposing that data publicly, and whether that is within the current scope of work (read: whether it would cost extra money).
This stuff is all available in the backend already. You can always email me (and people often do) to check progress toward milestone achievements, like reaching 10,000 hours, or to get annual figures. It takes me only about 4 clicks.
I'll send you an email about your particular recent log entries.
